About this dataset

Clouds are made up of trillions of tiny water droplets and ice crystals. Have you ever wondered how much water all those particles add up to? Of course, the answer is different for different types of clouds. Thin, wispy cirrus clouds contain much less water than thick, puffy-looking cumulus clouds. Scientists want to measure how much water is in a cloud because that information helps them to better understand where and how much water moves back and forth between Earth's surface and atmosphere. Knowing how much water is in a cloud also helps them to better estimate how much sunlight that cloud will reflect back into space and how much warmth that cloud traps near Earth's surface. Today, scientists use NASA satellites to measure how much water is in clouds all over the world. The colors on these maps show how many grams of water per square meter you would get if you squashed all the water out of the clouds into a flat layer on the ground. White areas show clouds with a lot of water, pink shades show less water, and purple shows little or no cloud water.